


i’ve only got eyes for you

by neville



Series: thorbruce shorts [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), alcohol mention, i fix endgame, the russos whom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 06:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21453880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Thor sat up, suddenly, and took Bruce’s big green hand, and said, “if we both survive this, promise me you’ll marry me.”
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Thor
Series: thorbruce shorts [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419172
Comments: 9
Kudos: 110





	i’ve only got eyes for you

**Author's Note:**

> the endgame ending? don't know her

Bruce is pretty sure Thor was drunk when he said it. Thor was always drunk, his eyes blurred and his brain slack behind the wheel. There wasn’t a lot Bruce could do about it except try to make sure he ate, and slept, and stick with Thor even when everyone else’s patience ran thin. Bruce’s never did. 

He had thought that Thor was asleep, sprawled on the sofa watching the  _ Star Wars _ prequels while everybody else was still busy discussing the Stones; but Thor had sat up, suddenly, and taken Bruce’s big green hand, and said, “if we both survive this, promise me you’ll marry me”. 

What Bruce knows he should’ve said is  _ Thor, don’t be silly _ , or  _ Thor, you’re drunk, go back to sleep _ . What he did say was  _ I promise _ , and now he’s alive (albeit with an arm blackened with burns), and sitting in the hospital waiting for somebody to sort out his prescription and bill him, and thinking that he most definitely agreed to marry Thor, and that actually, he’d kinda like to.  _ That’s _ the scary part. Not scary - maybe that isn’t the right word. He just didn’t expect his feelings to be this strong. 

There are so many feelings inside of him right now, bubbling like a cauldron. He sighs. 

It’s Natasha who comes to pick him up, eventually. Everything’s so in flux that he didn’t expect anyone to come for him at all, but he’s still waiting when she arrives, holding a sheaf of papers in her hand. “I’ve sorted it,” she says. “Come on, Big Guy.” 

“You  _ could _ pick a more inventive nickname,” Bruce says, easing himself from the two plastic chairs he’s been pasted to and following her through the clinically clean corridors. He’s never had his arm in a sling before, and it makes him feel dizzy, and like putting one foot in front of the other is suddenly a skill he’s having to retune. “Is everyone else alright?” 

Tony is in intensive care right now; Bruce is assured that he’ll be fine, because all the world’s best doctors who aren’t him (he was assured that Shuri was there, and he’s met her only twice but he thinks she’d be the person he’d ask for first if he was ever sick) are treating him, but otherwise, the rest of the Avengers are recuperating in one of their warehouses. Bruce has never been one to care about money, or the Avengers’ sprawling properties; but it’s nice, now, having somewhere to go and lie down and listen to the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. 

“Mostly they’re sleeping,” Natasha says. “They’re on the comedown. The ones who can’t sleep are helping with the clean-up effort.” 

“What about Thor?” Bruce asks. He knows that Natasha isn’t stupid enough to not have noticed. She’s always ahead of the rest of them. 

“He’s not sleeping. Actually, he’s waiting for you.” 

And he is: in the vast expanse of the warehouse, amongst the thrown-down coats and blankets that many of the world’s greatest heroes are asleep on in that haze of exhaustion, is Thor. Natasha told Bruce on the ride over that Thor looked as if he was waiting for someone to save him, and seeing Thor now he realises quite how literal that was: Thor is looking at Bruce as if he hung the stars in the sky, and he crosses the concrete floor, taking hold of Bruce’s hand and beaming at him. 

“Hi, Banner,” he says, and then puts his arms around Bruce. It’s still strange to be taller than him, Bruce thinks. It’s strange to be taller than anybody, now, but it’s strangest to be taller than a God. 

“Hey, Thor,” he says. A part of him wants to put a hand in Thor’s hair. Another part wants to hug like they did on Sakaar, a desperate mess of hands and grins and relative chaos. The rest of him knows that this isn’t like that. Everything’s quiet now. “Listen, buddy, do you remember what you said to me on the couch that day?” 

Thor stiffens a little, and leans back from the hug. Bruce doesn’t think he can even look Thor in the eyes; not for embarrassment, but he thinks that if he looks Thor in the eyes he might just crumble. Thor definitely remembers, and Bruce has definitely just dug himself into the hole that he both wants to be in and is scared of at the same time. “Do you still want to get married?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Thor says. “I’m sorry, I know I sprung it on you, but – I was serious.” 

Bruce’s facade cracks, and he smiles, and lets out a little half-laugh, because he’s sort of just proposed and Thor has sort of just said yes. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I promised.” 

“I’m sorry about everything, Banner,” Thor insists, placing his hands on Bruce’s shoulders; Bruce can feel him fidgeting with the fabric of his sling. “I really am. I could’ve and should’ve been better, and – I’m glad you’re with me.” 

“Hey, I’m glad you’re here.” Bruce places his hands on Thor’s arms, and gently lowers them, otherwise he thinks that they’d be here forever like that, body touched to body, warmth to warmth, holding onto the last gasps of tenderness. He thinks about kissing Thor and discovering if his lips are chapped or smooth or neither and if he’ll smile when their mouths touch, but he doesn’t, because if there’s one gift that’s been given to them, it’s time. There’s time for these things: time to talk, and kiss, and marry in neat rituals and then ruminate as they brush their teeth in the bathroom they share. “We should go help.” 

Thor nods. Because this is it, really: for years they’ve never felt like heroes, and Bruce doesn’t know what it’ll take to remedy that feeling or if it’ll ever ease at all. But it’s about – his therapist told him this, when he finally asked Tony if he could help front the costs for some psychotherapy – baby steps, first and foremost. All steps are still steps. 

Even if their helping just turns into bringing lunch for everybody; they mediate between several cafés and restaurants and fast food chains, and carry them back and forth and sit in the rubble as they eat. Heroes, and people, and the intersection. 

  
  


The date for the wedding is set for the next year, to be held in what will hopefully be the flourishing New Asgard: with the lost Asgardians returned, the town is entering a new phase of growth, and their wedding is expected to be the centrepiece of the joy of its rejuvenation. When Tony is discharged from hospital and feeling better, they all go out for dinner and drinks to celebrate the occasion: it feels like everybody is trying to make the most of their lives, now, having lived in the shadow of death. Steve announces his retirement as Captain America – he’s going to get some dogs, he says, and try to “get some of that life everyone keeps talking about”; Bucky is moving in with Sam, and they plan to take on the tricky business of crime fighting in New York; Tony is going back to the quiet life – “yeah, yeah, I’m sick of near death experiences, the angelic chorus is getting boring”; Rhodey is taking over as head of the Avengers; et cetera, et cetera. Peter Parker, thank God, is going back to school, and wants college recommendations from Bruce. It’s nice, seeing everybody pursue what they  _ want _ to do. It feels like the world is changing. 

And it’s so easy to be with Thor. It’s easy to spend time with him, and be in his presence, and talk to him, and touch him; they have sex for the first time just a few weeks into their engagement, the intimacy of it like exposure, rawness. It’s strange – Bruce hasn’t been intimate with anybody for years, can’t remember the last time he was, but it feels like it comes back so naturally. Falling asleep with his head on Thor’s shoulder; sharing the bathroom for their morning or evening ablutions; bickering over the sharing plates on their Pizza Hut takeout menu. 

(He usually wouldn’t buy into this sort of thing, but maybe he just wasn’t made for anyone else.) 

“I can’t believe,” Tony says as they walk through the streets of New York, Morgan balanced on Bruce’s shoulders, “that of all of us to get together, it was you two. You probably lost someone a bet. What even  _ happened _ on that other planet?”

“A lot,” Bruce says. “We were on a party ship.” 

“I mean, if him and his beer gut make you happy, then… good for you guys and I can’t wait to be the best man.” 

“I haven’t asked you,” Bruce says, but he knows as well as Tony that of  _ course _ that’s how it’ll be. Thor, for the poignant loss of the men in his life, will be appointing a maid of honour; he says, when Bruce asks, that he’s between Valkyrie and Sif. The rest of the groomsmen and bridesmaids are sketched out already; they weren’t hard choices. “And you know in Asgard, when you get older, they find that kind of body really sexy? I think you’re projecting your Earth prejudices, man.” 

“Okay, but how much does  _ that _ beard itch when you’re making out?” 

Bruce makes a face. “ _ Way _ too much.” 

He visits Steve the next day, while he’s still in New York (he and Thor are splitting their time between New York and New Asgard now, and never really getting the balance right); Steve really  _ is _ starting on his mission to adopt dogs, with two puppies he says are from a shelter that he hasn’t settled on names for yet. He says that he’s thinking of naming them Sam and Bucky and pestering the two with messages about their canine alternatives all day, now that he’s retired and doesn’t have anything better to do than watch several decades’ worth of movies and walk his dogs. 

“Are you enjoying being retired?” Bruce asks as they settle at a café, sitting outside on its metal chairs ducked under a red Parisian-style awning. The unnamed puppy who is definitely Sam sleeps in his lap. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, and sounds like he means it. “I kinda get what you and Thor are going for. It’s about being happy, right? And finding your own  _ personal _ happiness. Beating up bad guys all day – yeah, it  _ is _ great, but it’s not my true happiness, I guess.” 

“Have you found anything you like to do?” Bruce asks, stirring some sugar into his coffee. He doesn’t know why he still drinks it; he’s too big for the caffeine to really have any effect. But it’s a habit that doesn’t feel bad – coffee is always a comforting ritual. 

“Yeah, actually. I liked art a lot when I was a kid, so I’ve been going to a couple classes, and it’s nice. It’s nice just to feel at peace. Most of the time I still feel bad knowing that there’s injustice out there that I could be stopping, but – then sometimes I feel like I finally get to breathe, and draw, and not worry about what’s going on out there.” 

Some people stop to take pictures, and even more come to just fawn over the puppies, who get posted to the Dogspotting Facebook page just after noon. Bruce shows it to Steve. 

“God, I love the internet,” Steve laughs, and then lets a moment pass. “Hey, Bruce. How’d you know you wanted to marry Thor?”

Bruce hums. “He asked, first of all,” he says. “And then I thought, actually, spending the rest of my life with him was what I really wanted. It was a bit of a snap decision.” 

“I think I wanna step out with someone,” Steve says. “I’m just worried about it. You know, everybody’s tried to get me to date, and I’ve never really wanted to, and I’m scared that I just  _ think _ it’s something I want.” 

Bruce looks at him, and suddenly feels as if he has an insight into Steve in a way he’s never been able to divine inside people’s heads before. Bruce’s social skills have always been lacking, but there’s something just so open about Steve in this moment that Bruce asks “who is it?” and Steve says “Bucky” and Bruce says, “Steve, not to be dramatic ’cause that’s Thor’s thing, but he’d follow you to the ends of the earth”. 

“I’m no expert in love,” he says, “but if it makes you happy then be in love with him.”

Steve laughs. “I don’t know, Bruce, I think you could do a pretty convincing TED talk on this stuff.” 

When Bruce goes back to New Asgard a few days later, as Thor teaches him a new form of Asgardian braid, he says “I think we might be responsible for another couple getting together”. 

Thor pops a chocolate from the box Bruce brought back into Bruce’s mouth, so as not to disrupt his work, and tilts his head up ever so slightly. “Who?” he asks curiously. Bruce finishes eating the cocoa truffle and kisses Thor’s forehead; something of an “I love you, baby” passes between them in mumbles that may or may not be those words. 

“Steve told me that he really likes Bucky, and I told him to ask him out,” Bruce says. “We should put them together at the table for the wedding.” 

“When I throw the bouquet,” Thor says, “I’ll aim it at them.” 

Bruce thinks he’s joking until he overhears Thor a few days later discussing floral arrangements with Valkyrie. He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, actually, because he  _ does _ have somewhere to be; but he hovers for a moment, listening to Thor very seriously try to pick out the flower that for him best symbolises his love for Bruce, and wonders what the fuck he spent those five years doing, all on his own, because the truth is simple: he’s been in love with Thor since Sakaar; maybe before, even. Bruce is in love and he wonders what he did with all those minutes where he didn’t say it. 

  
  


The wedding lasts an actual, literal week, and Bruce is so tired by the end of it that he feels electric. Or maybe that’s just Thor. Sometimes he can’t tell the difference, and doesn’t mind. 

Steve catches the bouquet. He says he won’t get married, but two years later, Bruce is a groomsman at his, wondering how something so bright could come from something so dark. 

  
  


The idea that nothing on the level of Thanos could happen again was always laughable; it feels that, as long as the galaxy lives and breathes, there will be new threats, one after the other. Thor and Bruce are both still Avengers, of course, so they meet each threat with bravery and vengeance that feels as if it strengthens every time. Bruce, after all, has more and more to live for: before, he clung to a vague idea of his own survival and self-preservation, and then his friends’, and now he has a husband and a family and a people that look to him as much as he looks to them. So every time the world almost ends, he’s there. 

This is a big one, a universe-level threat; everyone is here, from every country, every planet, fighting under the banner of Captain Marvel. Bruce worked with Shuri on projected enemy arrival time, double and triple and quadruple checking until Amadeus Cho came in and told them both to sleep and did the quintuple check for them, and now there’s nothing to do but sleep and wait. Everything is in place. 

“I should ask you to marry me again if we survive,” Thor says with a smile. Neither of them can sleep, so they’ve been playing Connect 4 on the bed, and so far Thor hasn’t smashed it yet, which is a record for him. 

“I want to ask something this time,” Bruce says seriously, because he  _ is _ serious. He’s been thinking about this for months as the metaphorical skies have darkened and the threat of attack loomed closer and closer. He’s been thinking about it before then, visiting Steve’s ranch where he and Bucky live with their sixteen dogs (including Bucky Jr.); and even before then, when he was invited to deliver a series of guest lectures at universities across the state. “If we survive, can we think about having a kid?”

“ _ Think _ about it?” Thor says, connecting a four that Bruce somehow didn’t notice he was going for. Bruce lets out a breathy laugh, and flushes the counters. “That isn’t quite as decisive.” 

“I thought it might be a bigger decision, so maybe we should utilise some of our collective brain cells.” 

“I don’t need to think about it,” Thor says, a little more forcefully. “Of course I want to have children with you.” 

“Really?” Bruce says, and when the word escapes his lips he thinks he’s being rhetorical, but in the seconds where it hangs in the air he realises that it isn’t. He’s still brimming with years of anxieties: before Thor, he could always dismiss it, push it aside; but now they’re bubbling to the surface, the worries that he might be a bad father, that any child may end up with his depressive predispositions, that he’ll never be good enough for them, that he’ll mess up another life. 

Thor takes his hand across the bed, and smothers the voice of Bruce’s fears. They’ll be back. They just don’t speak while Thor does. “Yes,” he says with a laugh. “Really.” 

When they’re done playing Connect 4, and are too exhausted to think but too exhausted to sleep, Thor links his fingers with Bruce’s and rests them on his chest and over his beating heart. The rhythm of it isn’t regular; sometimes it speeds, then slows, then speeds up again as if he remembered that he was living and breathing, and Bruce listens to the sound of his thoughts that way. He remembers the last time he was scared like this, standing in the middle of a great big time machine, wondering if this was it and if his atoms were going to be scattered throughout the quantum field and never recuperate. That was before they even knew that Thanos was coming back, before the debris of the Avengers Compound crushed him, before he fought for his life and that of Earth’s on the sprawling battlefield; and even before he’d known that strangest fear of standing opposite the person you love most in the world and placing your love in their hands. 

But after all that fear, all that pain, all those sleepless nights and futile worries, there had always been peace, and happiness, and the sun rising over New Asgard, shining over the water. 

He is scared now. He might always be a little bit scared. Maybe it’s the gamma; maybe it’s hard not to be scared when you hold inside you the force of a detonated bomb. But he doesn’t want the fear to be everything. He wants to wake up tomorrow and see Thor’s face in the sunlight and get to think that he’s beautiful before he remembers.

“Thor,” he says. 

“Yeah?” 

“I love you.” 

They’ve said it to each other so many times their lips must be numb with the words; but Thor laughs a little with the joy, and shuffles a little closer to Bruce, and his heart speeds up. “I love you too.” 


End file.
